Cloudscapes + the Geomorphically Constrained City is a two-week investigation into the ways timelapse photography can improve upon models of landscape, urban, and architectural representation. We propose using the unique sectional opportunities in the country of Colombia as a laboratory in two regions: the desert peninsula of La Guajira and then the interface of urban and Andean topography in Medellín.  These diverse and striking landscapes will set the stage for an investigation into the role timelapse photography can play in better understanding workflows and methods of dynamic representation. Each site will produce a set of different products which we will make available to the GSD community. La Guajira peninsula will result in a catalog of cloud motion sequences for use in dynamic representation of design projects. Medellín will result in a montage sequence that presents the city from the perspective of sectionally-driven urban and ecological flows. Each product of Cloudscapes + the Geomorphically Constrained City will be informed by rigorous documentation of environments through the medium of timelapse photography.

PERSONNEL

Field Investigators:  Nathan Shobe, M.Arch I, Emmet Truxes, M.Arch I

Faculty advisors: Felipe Correa, Chris Hoxie

Contacts: Ramiro Almeida

INTRODUCTION

Cloudscapes + the Geomorphically Constrained City is an investigation into the ways timelapse photography can improve upon models of landscape, urban, and architectural representation. Currently, the static image dominates the means of representation within the GSD. We find this troubling, especially when static images are used to portray interventions within complex, dynamic environments based on systems and flows. As such, Cloudscapes + the Geomorphically Constrained City is an investigation in two parts, both of which use timelapse photography as a means of departure. Colombia’s diverse ecological environments would allow us to perform our research within two fascinating landscapes: the desert peninsula of La Guajira and then the interface of urban and Andean topography in Medellín.

The first track is technically oriented and involves shooting high definition timelapse photography of dynamic cloud motion using state-of-the-art DSLR cameras. This continues a body of work performed under a GSD junior faculty research grant with Chris Hoxie during the summer of 2011 which resulted in timelapse animation of cloud movements overlooking New York City’s Upper Bay harbor. We have chosen La Guajira peninsula in the northeast of Colombia for its unique landscape as a desert surrounded on three sides by water. Furthermore, this location allows us to shoot a sky with a clear horizon line, free of the “noise” of modern urban environments (aircraft, smog, pigeons).

The second track uses timelapse photography to better understand urban flows in a geographically constrained city. We have chosen Medellín as the perfect case study into how intense topographical change can influence the development of urban fabric. This continues a body of work performed in the field in Quito, Ecuador for Felipe Correa’s Options Studio in the spring of 2012. Shooting Quito through methods of timelapse allowed us to return to the GSD and analyze the juxtaposition of sectionally-driven urban landscapes within the consistent framing of environmental flows. For each of our thesis projects at the GSD, Medellín presents itself as a fascinating precedent for its diversity of nested natural and human ecologies and the resulting edge conditions.

This two-pronged research track will allow us to answer the following questions.
1. What are the tools designers need to better represent the living landscape in projects that deal with urban and natural environments?
2. Can these tools be created from interrogating the landscapes and climates in which we build?
3. What modes of representation can we create through studying an environment?
4. Can Medellín, as an urban laboratory for the 21st-century Latin American city, be better understood through the representation of urban and environmental flows?
5. Can timelapse photography provide a vantage point, both in the field and in post processing, that can allow us to form new threads of research and methods of representation?

HYPOTHESIS

Rigorous photo documentation of a dynamic range of cloud movements and unique urban environments will benefit design analysis and representational workflow by providing the GSD new tools to articulate design projects.

OBJECTIVES

La Guajira peninsula: Produce a catalog of timelapse video files of cloud dynamics for the implementation into design animation and analysis software. This catalog, along with a technical tutorial series, will be made public to the GSD with an emphasis on integration within the 3dsmax workflow.
Medellín: Shoot the city through timelapse, concentrating on how urban and natural landscapes can be framed and represented. In post-processing, develop a stance on how montage can form arguments and narratives for representing a dynamic environment. Identify additional streams of research for thesis work, in the same vein as ideas for new forms of representation.

PROPOSED SITES OF RESEARCH
The proposed locations span ecologies from the coastal settlements of Punta Gallinas at the northernmost tip of South America to the nested natural and human ecologies in the highlands of the Andes Mountain in the valley of Medellín. The Alexander von Humboldt section below of Ecuador shows the biodiversity that results from this type of sectional relationship. Our research sites, therefore, are two unique environments that will index the ecological variety that can result from sharp topographical shifts.

the proposed sites of research in Colombia + the Alexander von Humboldt section of Ecuador

FIRST TRACK, PREVIOUS WORK

The GSD junior faculty research grant with Chris Hoxie in the summer of 2011 was an important starting point for this vein of research. Over the course of several months, a methodology was developed to capture smooth timelapse cloud animations for digital backgrounds, HDRI images for digital scene lighting, and hemispherical cloud animations for digital cloud masks and reflection environments.

We started by shooting New York City’s Upper Bay harbor from a rooftop in Red Hook, Brooklyn using a Canon 5D Mark II DSLR camera with a fixed 24mm lens. We carefully documented the aperture and shutter speed, as well as time of day and type of cloud cover. In order to create smooth cloud motion between each frame, it was necessary to open the aperture and lower the shutter speed to create blur. Since we were often shooting into the sun, this required attaching a neutral density filter to allow ourselves the ability to adjust the exposure. We shot one frame per second using an attached intervelometer in RAW format and adjusted the exposure later in post-production.

We also worked on a workflow for HDRI capture using an 8mm fisheye lens that could capture a 180 degree hemispherical environment. The camera was tethered to a laptop that could control the camera’s exposure. By stringing together a series of twelve exposures, we created multiple HDRI images that could be put into 3dsmax and used as lighting environments. The ultimate idea here was that we could begin to combine the animated digital background (shown below) with an HDRI image of the environment to create realistic lighting environments that would sync perfectly with the background.

CLOUDSCAPES: Research through a GSD junior faculty research grant with Chris Hoxie, Summer 2011, New York City

The HDRI research made us realize that we could also use the 8mm fisheye lens to shoot timelapse of the hemispherical sky. This type of timelapse would result in a single file that could serve two purposes. The first would be to use it as a reflection environment in 3dsmax, the basic idea being that if we had a reflective building sitting in front of one of our animated backgrounds from the previous page, we would also need clouds to be animating on the reflective surfaces. The second purpose would be to bring the animation sequence into post production and turn it into a black and white image mask that would make the sky black and the clouds white. This image could then be mapped onto a sphere and placed in front of the digital sun, thereby creating animated shadows that would roll over the project geometry in the scene file.

CLOUDSCAPES: Using an animated 8mm hemispherical sky capture to represent dynamic cloud movement in 3dsmax

FIRST TRACK, METHODOLOGY

This investigation, therefore, is a direct continuation of this line of research, making advancements in a number of key areas. First is the implementation of two DSLR cameras shooting simultaneously. In this workflow, one camera is pointing straight up with the 8mm fisheye, and the other pointing towards the horizon with a fixed 24mm lens. The 8mm captures an HDRI image for scene lighting and then both cameras shoot one second interval timelapse sequences simultaneously. This will result in complete digital environments that are perfectly synchronized with regards to lighting, cloud movement, and environmental phenomena. This camera setup is shown on the following page.

Shooting extended timelapse sequences in an intense urban environment like New York City made us acutely aware of urban flows and patterns. Our sequences captured the movement of ships around the harbor, the flight paths of planes arriving to LaGuardia Airport, and a number of seagulls. While we certainly appreciated understanding the pattern of these movements a bit better, we found that this was getting in the way of our requirements for high-definition animated background photography. It is imperative, therefore, that this investigation be conducted in a part of the world that is free from this “urban noise.” As a desert surrounded on three sides by the Caribbean Sea, La Guajira peninsula is uniquely situated as the ideal laboratory for indexing this research investigation.

NOISE: Aircraft and birds muddying the frame.

FIRST TRACK, PRODUCT

This investigation will produce a catalog of timelapse video files of cloud dynamics for the implementation into design animation and analysis software. This catalog, along with a tutorial series, will be made public to the GSD with an emphasis on integration within the 3dsmax workflow.

SECOND TRACK, PREVIOUS WORK

A few days before our Options Studio trip to Quito, Ecuador on February 11, 2012, we purchased two GoPro HD HERO2’s, small, lightweight, and highly versatile wide-angle HD video cameras that have the ability to shoot timelapse photography with a built-in intervalometer. We arrived in Quito with little face-time with the camera, but soon began photographing our studio’s movements around the city. The GoPro allowed us amazing flexibility with its lack of a need for a tripod and its automatic light sensor. Compared to the more robust DSLR Nikon D90’s we also had in the field, the GoPro lacks the necessary resolution to create high-quality, high-resolution sequences.

Quito is an excellent precedent study for the body of research we wish to complete in Medellín. Like Medellín, Quito is a city that sits within an Andean valley, surrounded on all sides by an intense and striking landscape. As a result, the city is highly affected by topography, with numerous vantage points for some incredible panoramas. We became interested in the way timelapse photography could index topographical urban landscapes and act as a framing device for representing Quito.

URBAN TOPOGRAPHY: On the left, two Nikon D90s shoot Quito’s sunset from the Panecillo, the hill seen on the right. In that image, a GoPro HD HERO 2 sits on a retaining wall to capture the sunset in the opposite direction.

We returned from Quito on February 19, 2012 and began organizing the timelapse sequences, passing them through post-production processes using Adobe After Effects and Magic Bullet Looks. This suite of tools allows us to rescale, adjust framing, manipulate color processing, and time remap to a powerful degree. It is through post-processing, therefore, that we can begin to think about how to (re)present the urban environment. A careful sequencing of montage, therefore, can drive a narrative agenda for representation.

SECOND TRACK, METHODOLOGY

Shooting Medellín will be a great opportunity to continue the vein of research we began in Quito. We found that experience to be driven by the schedule of the options studio, whereas our visit to Medellín will be driven by our own academic interests. Both of our future theses at the GSD are driven in varying degrees by urban informality.

Within this lens, Medellín is an excellent precedent study for its multiple layers of edge conditions. As an explicit sectional city with nested natural and human ecologies, Medellín can be read as a series of specific microclimates sponsored by large changes in topographical elevations. Our documentation is expected to index and expose the minute patterns of biodiversity that exist in sectionally-driven urban ecologies.
At the same time, Medellín’s municipality, landscape architects, urban designers, and architects have turned it into one of Latin America’s most exciting urban laboratories. A series of forward-thinking public programs have been situated to bridge the edge conditions between natural landscapes and urban informality. The most widely published project is the Biblioteca Parque España by Giancarlo Mazzanti. These projects offer a further framing device which we wish to take advantage of.

URBAN TOPOGRAPHY: Shooting timelapse for a week in Quito with two DSLR’s and two GoPro HD HERO2’s

SECOND TRACK, PRODUCT

The end goal of this research investigation is to compile a montage video of timelapse sequences interrogated through the previously mentioned post-production processes. This will allow us to develop a stance on how observational field work can form narratives for representing complex ecologies. We expect this product to be heavily influenced by our experiences within Medellín and hope this project opens up new threads for future research.

PRECEDENTS

We have chosen five precedents in mediums that vary from fine-art still photography to photo-realistic digital animation. Each project presents a particular angle through which to view natural and built environments. We look at these precedents through their use of framing, subject, montage, and post-production. In the precedents that deal with the juxtaposition of ecological and urban conditions, we look at how nature acts as a framing device or vice-versa. Subject matter, particularly one that is dynamic, becomes contingent on this framing. The use of montage acts as a sequential device for stitching together multiple angles, ultimately resulting in a sequence that presents content with a particular narrative agenda. Post-production includes anything from color correction, lens phenomena, edge blur and vignetting, and frame rate. We see our investigation as a continuation of these important precedents, ultimately using them as a starting point for thinking of new means and methods of representation.

“Salt”, Murray Fredericks: Australian photographer who has made sixteen solo journeys into the interior of Australia to shoot the salt flats of Lake Eyre. We look at his work as an important lesson in framing, location, and perseverence.

“Timescapes”, Tom Lowe: Astronomical photographer whose work “Timescapes” offers unparalleled views into timelapse photography’s role in better understanding the Earth as an environment of patterns and flows.

“Vancouver City”, David and Dan Newcomb: Twin Canadian DSLR photographers whose perspective of Vancouver neatly justaposes urban and natural flows. Careful consideration to framing the urban within the natural and vice-versa.

“The Sandpit”, Sam O’Hare: A day in the life of New York City caught by this director, photographer, and visual effects artist. This project shows the power of post-production “tilt-shift” effect to produce the sense of miniature environments.

“The Third & Seventh”, Alex Roman: Spanish CG artist who created a groundbreaking photo-realistic animation in 2009 of multiple architectural environments, including these images that show animated cloud movement. A benchmark of CG graphics for us all.

This intervention within a traditional neighborhood in the city of Shaoxing, China proposes a series of ground-level commercial pavilions underneath three single-family housing units. As the program moves in section from public to private, spaces expand and contract through an interfacing of interiority and exteriority.

This culminates a semester of investigation that began with traditional Chinese landscape painting as an exchange for narrative, layering, ambiguity, and threshold in architecture. The scale of the project provided the opportunity to use animation as a representational tool to explore the poetic qualities through shifts in material, proportion, transparency, and light.

Project geometry and animation produced in 3dsmax 2012 rendered in V-ray 2.0, post production in Adobe After Effects and Magic Bullet Looks, compiled in Adobe Premiere.

Music an excerpt from “La Mer, L. 109, I. De l’aube à midi sur la mer” by Debussy

Two moves expose the deep workings of the station, the creation of a shifting groundplane that moves between street and the concourse, and the punching of large atriums through each building. These atrium figures becomes the primary structure of the three buildings and represent a meeting of infrastructural forces.

HYBAR reconfigures the shipping container through the simple moves of peeling the skin and slicing/rotating the roof.  On the exterior, the result is a form that constantly shifts and surprises depending on perspective.  But the results are felt most in the interior.  The peeling of the walls expands the floor area, and the rotated roof opens up the ceiling.

The apertures created by the geometric moves are clad in Tyvek, which allows a level of diffuse daylight to enter the space, while simultaneously advertising its presence at night.  The rotated roof planes introduce a hyperbolic-paraboloid Tyvek roofing system, from which are hung lanterns that act as clothing racks and counter space.  At night these lanterns rise up and activate the space.

Ultimately, HYBAR is about embracing Brooklyn’s great urban qualities and the opportunities that Dekalb Market will bring to its neighborhood. Like the majority of New Yorkers, HYBAR is multiple things at once, difficult to categorize, and always ready with a surprise.

See the winning entries here.

This paper proposes to look at how the concept of global integration affects architectural practice between the United States and Mexico.  In 1991, the United States, Mexico, and Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), creating a tri-lateral trade bloc between the three member nations that came into effect in 1994.  One of the key stipulations of NAFTA was the removal of discriminatory regulatory practices like trade tariffs against foreign goods and services, and the result was the liberalization of the North American economic bloc. [1]

Among the many industries affected by NAFTA was architecture, construction, engineering, and consulting-management.  NAFTA created the economic framework that allowed for the professional regulatory organizations for the practice of architecture in the United States (National Council of Architectural Registration Boards – NCARB), Mexico (Federación de Colegios de Arquitectos de la República Mexicana – FCARM), and Canada (Committee of Canadian Architectural Councils – CCAC) to ratify a tri-national Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) for the international practice of architecture within the North American economic bloc signed in 2005. [2] The principal accomplishments of this MRA were the transfer of licensure and the implementation of a series of requirements that would ensure the health, safety, and welfare of the public throughout the three nations. [3]

With this framework in mind, Part I of this paper will zoom out, taking a look first at the socio-cultural implications of NAFTA on the built landscape and architecture between the United States and Mexico.  Part II will then look into the organizational structures that govern the practice of architecture in the United States and Mexico, their relationships to each other and the international community.  Part III will present the specific language in two agreements, Chapter 16 of NAFTA (concerning temporary entry for business persons) and the Tri-National Mutual Recognition Agreement for International Practice.

In From Aztec to High Tech: Architecture and Landscapes across the Mexico-United States Border, Lawrence A. Herzog [4] writes about the ramifications of NAFTA for the physical landscapes of the United States and Mexico, in particular the creation of cultural hybrids that represent the collision between two cultures with a shared (but discordant) history.  He writes:

In this age of global technology, distances between nations are growing smaller.  The boundary separating Mexico from the United States can no longer divide two neighboring societies.  An era of heightened cultural and economic integration is upon us. Mexico and the United States are discovering that they share a common economic and geographic life space. [5]

While NAFTA is certainly the driving force for the present condition of this integration, the relationship between the United States and Mexico extends back for decades.  Indeed, the southwestern United States was originally Mexican territory that was ceded after the Mexican-American War (known in Mexico as La intervención norteamericana) in 1848. There exists, therefore, a rich cultural history that extends the idea of the frontier deep into the current geography of the United States, notably California, Nevada, Utah, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. [6]

What is unique about Herzog’s approach is his tying together the broad ideas of globalization while focusing on how cultural collision, diffusion, and dialogue change the physicality of the built environment.  The question of integration, therefore, becomes not only one concerned with a liberalization of the economy as it concerns the trading of goods and services.  In the case of NAFTA, there have been enormous repercussions for the socio-cultural fabric which affects the physicality and identity of cities and landscapes.

Transnational forces are dramatically altering late-twentieth-century cities.  Globalization is theorized to be a change in social and economic relations, but its impact on the built environment is not sufficiently understood…the Mexico-U.S. border region represents a laboratory where one can begin to understand how global processes (transnational manufacturing, free trade, immigration, etc.) transform urban and regional landscapes…As we enter the era of NAFTA, a new kind of landscape must be contended with: the transcultural urban landscape. [7]

How then might architecture come to bear as a representative and driver of this new idea of space between the United States and Mexico?  The title of Herzog’s book, From Aztec to High Tech addresses the heart of this question.  Aztec refers to the rich tradition in Mexican architecture and urbanism of a continuity and dialogue with its indigenous and colonial-Spanish past.  Herzog writes, “There are few countries in the world with a more distinguished tradition of urban design and architecture.  Here one finds some of the greatest urban public works in the world…yet here one also encounters some of the most severe planning problems in late-twentieth-century global cities.” [8] High Tech, on the other hand, simultaneously refers to the spectacular growth and success of the American economy, the intense role of manufacturing and technology in shaping the landscape, and the inherent problems that “mass communication, big business, and powerful central authorities” bring to bear on the urban environment. [9] Herzog posits that a new transfrontier architecture has arisen where these two different ideas of built environments collide.

It may now be possible to speak of ‘transfrontier architecture,’ architecture around the international border that is shaped by two cultures.  Few studies acknowledge the role of architects in shaping cultural landscapes.  Yet architecture is a profession that demands sensitivity to the built environment.  [10]

Ultimately, the forces that NAFTA unleashed will shape and create new sensibilities between the United States and Mexico that will be engaged through architecture and urbanism.  “Whether by a formal North American free-trade agreement, through cross-border marriage, or common geography, Mexico and the United States are becoming integrated, and so are the nearby (and in some cases distant) cities.” [11] Diffusion will certainly drive architects and planners to create, maintain, and sustain this cross-cultural dialogue.  Luckily, formal frameworks are in place to allow the easy transfer of professional practice in architecture from one country to the next.  As more firms take advantage of the unique ability to simultaneously exist in two cultures, the definitions of Herzog’s transfrontier architecture will shift and expand.

In facilitating architecture’s role in a world defined by the forces of globalization, a number of structures and agreements exist between each nation’s professional organizations that oversee the practice of architecture.  The umbrella is the International Union of Architects (UIA), a global organization that represents the architectural profession, founded in Switzerland in 1948.  “Over time, the UIA has become an accomplished non-governmental organization, an incomparable professional network of architects that reaches all continents.” [12] The UIA is broken into five global sectors, Region III (the Americas) currently contains the following nations: Argentina, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, and the United States. [13] The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and FCARM are the United States and Mexican representatives to the UIA.

The Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) is the means by which the professional organizations in a nation or group-of-nations facilitate the easy transfer of licensure between countries.  For instance, the Architect’s Council of Europe (ACE), the body that effectively governs the practice of architecture in Europe, currently has fully negotiated MRAs with AIA/NCARB and FCARM.  At the present moment, “the ACE has concluded a profession-to-profession Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) with the AIA and NCARB on the recognition of qualifications that is aimed at facilitating the mobility of architects between the USA and the EU. The MRA is currently entering the stage of official negotiations between the USA and the EU, which, if successful, will give legal effect to the MRA.” [14] Once this MRA and its Mexican equivalent are in effect, the ramifications will be enormous for the cross-Atlantic integration of the profession.

Prior to the signing of the 2005 Tri-National Mutual Recognition Agreement for International Practice between the United States, Canada, and Mexico there were plenty of hopeful signs that pointed towards full integration of architectural practice within the North American bloc.  In 1994 NCARB and the CCAC signed an Inter-Recognition Agreement that allowed for and regulated the exchange of licensure between the United States and Canada. [15] At the time, NCARB had a number of options available for the exchange of licensure between Mexico and the United States.  Principal among these was the Broadly Experience Foreign Architect Program (BEFA), which “allows foreign architects to demonstrate competence to independently practice architecture, while protecting the public health, safety, and welfare to meet the examination requirement of NCARB certification.” [16] Another mainstay were Practice in Host Nation Agreements (PHNs) which “codified the practice of architecture by a foreign architect in association with a locally registered architect who takes full legal responsibility for a project.”  PHNs stipulated that the regulatory bodies for both nations in question approve of the status of the architect in question. [17] Due to the Inter-Recognition Agreement with Canada and the PHN with Mexico, by 2003 “almost 30 percent of the U.S. firms working outside of the country [worked] in the Americas.” [18]

The Tri-National Mutual Recognition Agreement for International Practice came about as a result of NAFTA’s spirit of international cooperation and economic liberalization, in particular NAFTA’s Chapter 16 related to services.  The MRA was a textbook example of professional regulatory bodies across the three nations coming together in the spirit of NAFTA and pushing the idea of cross-partnership.

The NAFTA leaders stated that this agreement will make possible the recognition of credentials within the three NAFTA countries and will facilitate the cross-border trade in services. It was also declared that this kind of agreements contribute to achieving the objectives of NAFTA, and encourage other bodies of professionals to complete MRA’s being negotiated to develop mutually acceptable standards and criteria for licensing and certification of professional service providers. [19]

Specifically the MRA ensures that “reciprocal criteria, procedures, and measures are established for the mutual recognition of architects’ degrees.”  In setting these professional standards, architects are ensured mobility, respect, and dignity in pursuing projects across North America.

It is worthwhile to turn now to the specific language of the two key agreements, Chapter 16 of NAFTA, which pertains to the temporary entrance for business persons, and the Tri-National Mutual Recognition Agreement for International Practice.

Chapter 16 of NAFTA opens with the following general principles:

Further to Article 102 (Objectives), this Chapter reflects the preferential trading relationship between the Parties, the desirability of facilitating temporary entry on a reciprocal basis and of establishing transparent criteria and procedures for temporary entry, and the need to ensure border security and to protect the domestic labor force and permanent employment in their respective territories. [20]

The grant of temporary entry is defined as such:

Each Party shall grant temporary entry to business persons who are otherwise qualified for entry under applicable measures relating to public health and safety and national security. [21]

As it pertains to business visitors:

Each Party shall grant temporary entry to a business person seeking to engage in a business activity set out in Appendix 1603.A.1, without requiring that person to obtain an employment authorization, provided that the business person otherwise complies with existing immigration measures applicable to temporary entry. [22]

And as it pertains to professionals, of which architecture is included.

Each Party shall grant temporary entry and provide confirming documentation to a business person seeking to engage in a business activity at a professional level in a profession set out in Appendix 1603.D.1, if the business person otherwise complies with existing immigration measures applicable to temporary entry. [23]

The Tri-National Mutual Recognition Agreement for International Practice is composed of signatories representing the United States, Mexico, and Canada.  NCARB, with the approval of the AIA, represents America, and the CCAC, with the approval of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC) represents Canada.  Mexico’s structure is as follows:  The Comité Mexicano para la Práctica Internacional de la Arquitectura (COMPIAR) “is the official body established by the Mexican Federal Government to negotiate the international practice of foreign architects in Mexico and Mexican architects abroad.”  It is chaired jointly by members from FCARM and the Asociación de Instituciones de Ensefianza de la Arquitectura de la República Mexicana (ASINEA).  FCARM “is the organization in Mexico that represents the local Colegios. These Colegios are mandated by law to protect the title ‘architect’ within their jurisdiction…ASINEA is the organization that represents the schools of architecture in Mexico.” [24]

In the opening statement of the agreement, the goals are stipulated as the following:

Whereas, the signatories share the goal of allowing qualified architects to offer professional services within their Domestic Jurisdictions under circumstances that protect the health, safety and welfare of the public and respect the architectural culture, heritage and laws of the Domestic Jurisdiction in which the services are performed [25]

The specific implementation of the goals is as follows:

2.1 This Agreement establishes criteria, procedures and measures for the mutual recognition of qualifications that will facilitate the portability of qualifications through reciprocity for the provision of services within the NAFTA countries. The purpose of this agreement is to:

2.1.1 Establish mutually acceptable standards for practice and professionalism, including expertise, autonomy, commitment and accountability.

2.1.2 Establish a system of governance to serve the Agreement that enables it to properly monitor performance, facilitate implementation, including the audit of academic standards and systems of continuing professional development (CPD) and resolve disagreements.

2.1.3 Ensure consumer protection and safeguard the interest of society, architecture, the environment, sustainability, culture and public health, safety, welfare.

2.1.4 Set standards in recognizing equivalence in qualifications;

2.1.5 Prevent practice by unqualified persons.

2.1.6 Not supersede or otherwise affect any other agreements between or among any of the parties. [26]

Principles of professionalism are as follows:

Members of the architectural profession in the NAFTA countries are dedicated to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity and competence, and bring to society unique skills and aptitudes essential to the sustainable development of the built environment and the welfare of their societies and cultures. Principles of professionalism are established in legislation, as well as in codes of ethics and regulations defining professional conduct. [27]

Expertise is defined as such:

Architects possess a systematic body of knowledge, skills and theory developed through education, graduate and post-graduate training, and experience. The process of architectural education, training and examination is structured to assure the public that, when an architect is engaged to perform professional services, that architect has met acceptable standards enabling competent performance of those services. [28]

Scope of practice is defined as the following:

Architects registered in a jurisdiction are required to follow the laws and codes in force in each jurisdiction in which they have been authorized to practice. Architects practicing outside their own country under this agreement are limited to providing those services that local architects are permitted to provide and will only provide those services they customarily provide in their own country if less than those services permitted in the host jurisdiction.

This MRA recognizes the highest standards of education and practical training of architect within the three countries, which enables them to fulfill their fundamental professional requirements. [29]

Finally, the basis for eligibility:

Tri-National architects must have completed an accredited or recognized architecture program (by NAAB, ASINEA/COMAEA or CACB), or recognized equivalent that has been accepted for licensure, and been assessed within their own country as eligible for independent practice; and shall demonstrate a period of not less than ten years in certified post-registration/licensure, at least two years of which must be in responsible control of the comprehensive practice of architecture as verified by the architect’s Competent Body as determined by the Trinational Council for International Practice, and documented by a dossier of work. [30]

 

Ultimately, the framework is now in place for the serious and legitimate integration within the profession of architecture across North America.  The idea that architecture can engage with and represent a collision between disparate cultures is a powerful one.  Ultimately, any architecture firm that can simultaneously bridge the border between Mexico and the United States in the realm of professional practice while engaging in a dialogue with the new identities and cultures that will arise along the transfrontier will find themselves on the vanguard of the great social experiment of our time.

The swift urban corridors that are Barcelona’s avenues are the highest extrusion, while dense pedestrian fabric like the kind in Barri Gòtic are the shortest, and therefore the most embedded within the representational system.

in collaboration with Melissa Hurcomb and Gabrielle Piazza-Patawaran

In order to provide new generations of artists the wherewithal for development and honing of skills, this project emphasizes the role of the classroom as a facilitator between the multiple artistic disciplines of the performing arts. As such, the school takes on a primary presence along the waterfront, becoming the spine that links the primary theaters and rehearsal spaces. Visitors arriving from the street pass underneath an exposed studio theater. into a large atrium lobby between two side-loaded performance halls, with support spaces, cafe, and restaurant immediately adjacent.

With Brooklyn Seeside we propose an intervention that actively questions the city’s connection to its rivers.  Not content to merely build up and over, we push down, turning one third of the East River State Park site into an artificial beachfront with an autonomous swimming zone separate from the river.  This tangible connection to sand and water provides a fresh way to experience the waterfront and the view over to Manhattan.

Our next move, peeling up, creates a sloping field that dips beneath the water zone and rises out over the river as an island.  Beneath this grand gesture are three architectural interventions that seamlessly merge the sloping fields into green roofs.  The resulting interior zones serve as a means to cluster program, minimizing the impact of physical structures on the site.

In the summertime, Brooklyn Seeside will reinvent the festival experience by tying The Pool Parties and other events neatly into the site.  The main stage will rise on the island, bringing the pool back to the party by inviting fans to stand, swim, and play in the water zone to get closer to their favorite acts.  Second stage, dodgeball court, and general beach activities will happen at the edge of the water, and the fields will provide plenty of space for picnics and lying out.  The Kent Avenue Visitor Center, located at the corner of Kent and North Seventh, will provide a large interior space for ticketing, vending, and promotion, while the Food Court will offer a permanent roof for local restaurants and bars to offer their wares.

Most importantly, Brooklyn Seeside provides Williamsburg, Greenpoint, and greater New York a unique platform for public events, simultaneously catering to the needs of leisure, promotion, and event production.

Traditionally, sukkahs served as a means to be outside and connect with nature. In the modern urban context, this particular connection with nature is hard to achieve; therefore, Archifice brings the experience of nature into the interior, re-presenting the traditional role of the sukkah.

As such, Archifice is constructed from raw, unfinished materials: ½” thick plywood boards define the module, in which we insert a soil container of coconut fiber netting. In each container we place a variety of plants, all of which are open to the sun and the elements through each module’s lightwell.

The geometry of Archifice ensures that the sukkah acts as an object that responds to the urban nature of Union Square, while the inside functions as a world apart. Interior views are limited upwards to the sky through the lightwells, forcing an immediate reaction from the user. This exteriority and interiority speaks to the true nature of the sukkah, which exists as a porous structure whose spaces are by definition neither interior nor exterior.

For more information click here.

Ecofriend review and write-up of Archifice here.

Related projects undertaken at Harvard here and here.

A crucial part of the seminar were daily morning explorations through Rome, exposing the city’s layered history and dense fabric. This resulted in a deep respect for an architecture that integrates itself into its context, speaking to and acknowledging its neighbors.

Related studio project here and competition entry here.

This particular brick allows for a variety of packing solutions which present multiple configurations along each face. This results in the potential for unique interior and exterior conditions.

Related studio project here and competition entry here.

The qualities of the lock building grew from a series of study models that allowed for a wide range of movement between simple volumes enabled by telescoping arms and double hinges. The project is a study into the types of static and dynamic transformations able to be produced by this mechanism. In the project, the lock acts as a normative geometric condition over which two dynamic cubes dance. The geometry then deforms into a static trace as it extends away from the lock, opening up program for various types of gathering.

We strive for solutions that recognize the importance of contextual narrative and we gravitate towards the embodiment of a particular paradigm, a worldview that places thresholds over walls.

As such,

we stand in defiance against an architecture that acts as aggressor and participates as a physical manifestation in the deliberate act of invasion.

Three sets of examples — the first infrastructural, and the others more architectural — exemplify this malevolent condition.

The widespread practice of designing and constructing developments that swoop in on urban neighborhood creates an invasive paradigm that systematically destroys existing conditions. There are countless examples of this throughout the urban history of the United States, and as urban Americans we inhabit (and are aware of) the consequences of these actions on a daily basis. The interstate highway system, while great for connecting the entire country, gutted the majority of the urban centers it passed through. As a result, cities like the ones up and down the northeast (Hartford, Bridgeport, Providence) have massive infrastructural conduits placed in a manner that cuts neighborhoods from one another or block access to water and parkland. This particular edge condition, while not inherently architectural, still speaks appropriately to the mindset of the planners and theorists who had a hand in implementing these disastrous policies.

Further localized examples of contemporary invasive systems are seen everyday in development proposals which promise concepts like utopia and luxury, oftentimes boasting — as a means of escaping existing conditions — physical self-sequestration through the creation of a hard, impenetrable edge. At times these developments cut through the fine web of existing neighborhoods, creating super blocks that create awkward and hostile boundaries from the existing (Le Corbusier’s proposed Plan Voisin for Paris; the ever re-branded/re-presented Stuyvesant Town in Manhattan; the extreme polarities in Mexico City’s Santa Fe district). At other times, the developments are built over empty, unused lots. However, the scale of these proposals often dominates the neighborhoods at the periphery, causing the new architectural system to turn inwards, thereby creating a set of forces that forever skews the balance of the relationship (the outsized proposals for both the Atlantic Rail Yards in Brooklyn and the Hudson Rail Yards in Manhattan exemplifies this condition).

The final example of invasive systems lies at the individual, building level. Oftentimes, radical choices in tectonics, materials, and orientation will produce a form that is in contrast to the site’s natural energy. The result is a field condition in which attention is skewed towards the outlier, upsetting preexisting harmonies and producing a necessity for counterbalance. Storefronts often act in this invasive manner, placing irregular geometric systems, abrasive lighting schemes, and overindulgent branding strategies within the regulatory geometries along the façade. Furthermore, the harmony of neighborhoods with similar formal or material attributes can be upset by the invasion of a form that heeds no attention to contextual cues. There are many examples of this phenomenon in our day-to-day.

As such,

we stand alongside architectural paradigms that actively seek to find a middle ground between new systems and old, that straddle this edge at a balancing point, creating a threshold that connects disparate systems and perspectives.

In contrast to those who implement invasive systems of architecture, we recognize that the pluralities in today’s global world — acutely manifested in metropolises ranging in scope from New York City to Hong Kong to Mexico City — require the development of architectural systems that speak to the prevalence of multivalency.

At its core, this effort requires that architects contain the socio-cultural, political, intellectual wherewithal to internally recognize, balance, and manipulate relationships and systems that speak in the complexity of our time.

Due to this necessity, our architect truly manifests himself in the global metropolis, able to benefit from an environment that Georg Simmel lauds in The Metropolis and Mental Life. He writes, “Man is a creature whose existence is dependent on differences, i.e. his mind is stimulated by the difference between present impressions and those that have preceded…the metropolis creates psychological conditions — with every crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life — it creates the sensory foundations of mental life” (70). It is precisely these psychological conditions that allow for our architect’s mind to grapple with and weigh the powerful influences of multiple perspectives and an abundance of options. Simmel writes that the metropolitan type is able to take a “thousand individual modifications” (70). Operating simultaneously on many fronts (and intellectual and artistic mediums), therefore, forces tightly focused and deliberate decisions. This ability for fine manipulation gives our architect a wide range of control over his actions. And so, within the hard borders of a multivalent environment the urban architect weaves a series of internal thresholds, gateways that afford the ability to balance opinion, weigh perspective, and modify behavior.

Our architect is best suited to the creation, development, and implementation of an architectural paradigm that carefully places itself within its particular temporal, spatial, and perspectival edge condition. Perpetually straddling multiple worlds, our architect is master negotiator — a diplomat who speaks in form — able to listen to opposing ideas and worldviews, to dissect this content, and to argue for the most sensible solution.

An architecture that straddles the edge condition exists in order to take part in the overlapping systems that define today’s constantly shifting environment. Certainly, an architecture of the edge condition fights for the principles of connection. It is able to insinuate a new set of meanings and conjure a fresh dialectic with every new set of eyes that focus upon it. Thusly, it affords physical passage (from external to internal), temporal passage (by changing its meaning over time), and perspectival passage (by creating a unique set of relationships for every user). By actively encouraging the participation and interpretation of the individual, an architecture of the edge condition becomes a multivalent threshold, able to connect and integrate itself via similitude.

As such,

we propose the creation of architectural platforms that root out and study contextual narratives that allow for the appropriation and development of language formations: textual, representational, and tectonic.

Pushing towards the goal of creating an architecture that operates as threshold, we appreciate the importance of context and acknowledge that site conditions exist in locational, historical, and perspectival terms. Successful implementation of an architecture that grapples with, acknowledges, and participates with its surroundings requires the study of contextual narratives and understanding of its unique conditions.

The ability to speak well in any language (linguistic, contextual, aesthetic) requires substantial investment in the study of the vernacular, of the grammatical building blocks contained within any particular. Every culture, every place, and every individual contains and projects critical cues that speak to an underlying, prevalent condition. It is in this context that we find fluency in the history/theory matrix most appropriate and beneficial.

We believe that to create and build in a new environment requires firm understanding of textual language formations, of each historical context and the probable trajectories of locational conditions into the future. This narrative flow will determine the manner in which architecture dialogues with the various conditions at its periphery. In other words, architecture sits at the threshold between the past (for it is the past that has produced the events and conditions that caused a unique architectonic response) and the future (for it is the future that our building will simultaneously adapt to and influence).

Therefore, we claim that architecture, like any artistic and creative medium, is most successful when implemented subtly into this narrative flow. We look at invasive systems of architecture as clumsy, rash, and dangerous solutions to a complex network of problems. Rather, we push for the insertion of an architecture that does not soil the delicate nature of narrative.

Under this operating imperative we push architects to gain fluency in representational languages that best convey the nature of their ideas. We look at the creative process contained in the formulation of an architectural idea as the mere formulation of a projection of possibility. On paper nothing is built. The architect is looking forward and offering a potential solution – one that acknowledges quality of research, understanding, and fluency of condition. Tools that aid and push the boundaries of possibility in representational method, in particular the technological, are of critical importance. They allow the architect to effectively manage multiple theoretical working environments of spatial manipulation.

We believe an architecture of the edge condition achieves success when the architect reaches tectonic fluency – in material strategy, in lighting strategy, in siting strategy. We strive towards an architecture that is honest in all aspects of its identity, that retains control over the vast power it can command. We want our architecture to become part of future landscapes and narratives; we want our architecture to be culturally sustainable.

As such,

we will not design futuristic architecture. We will build for the future.

In this interplay of light and shadow, the most embedded space is granted the most natural light.

The proposed scheme is a poured concrete structure connected to the ground by a single entrance ramp. The program composition is broken in two, with an enclosed bedroom/study facing the street, and an open kitchen/dining that faces the back garden. These areas are attached by a thickened threshold of staircases. The orientation and composition of each element ensures that the lodged house will meet each neighbor in a unique manner, thereby breaking the ever-present idea of the twin, the typical.

in collaboration with:
Jill Doran, Hernan Garcia, Arielle Assouline-Lichten, Gabrielle Piazza Patawaran, Timothy Pingree, Michael Smith

We deconstructed a modular recycled system to create inhabitable space.

Simultaneously coherent with its function and its surrounding, this project is conceived and designed to showcase recyclability: both in building material and energy technology.

In my experience, underground engineers either provide the spatial layouts themselves or all too easily take on board pliable designers with whom they feel comfortable and this all too often produces labyrinthine tunnels and ad hoc formless space, usually encrusted with some mild decoration as a palliative.

Under Paoletti’s leadership, the Jubilee Line Extension project sought to redefine our understanding of underground travel through innovative and dramatic spaces.

The Jubilee Line Extension’s eleven stations vary in size and scope, but each is linked to its neighbor by an innovative use of space. Light is allowed in through generous carvings at surface level. The extension’s grandest station, Canary Wharf, has three glass canopies designed specifically to capture daylight and send it flooding into the ticket hall. The other large stations like Westminster and Canada Water use their vast hollowed-out interiors to give their passengers a sense of scale and point of reference. The monumentality of these spaces dramatizes the experience of travelling underground. As passengers move into and within the station, they cannot help but be inspired by the majesty of the architecture that surrounds them. My thesis follows in the accomplishments of the designers that developed the  Jubilee Line Extension.

My redesign of Bond Street Station solves two existing problems. First is the glaring lack of Underground surface identity along Oxford Street. The roundel is one of the most recognizable graphic symbols in the world.  In today’s competitive environment of high-stakes advertising, however, the roundel is no longer enough to attract the eye. This is especially true at the street entrance to Bond Street Station, where a dilapidated awning hangs flanked by dirty and faded roundels. Compared to the massive Footlocker store on one side, and an entire shopping mall on the other, the Underground presence along this section of Oxford Street is nothing short of a joke. The solution to this problem lies in the creation of an architectural element that sets it apart from its surroundings. By bursting through the street and sidewalks at oblique angles, the warped glass canopies dramatize the act of willfull descension into the ground.

The second problem that currently exists in Bond Street Station is the closed-off nature of its design. The current spatial configuration prevents passengers from understanding how the station is put together.  The restrictive tubes and pipes stifle the journey from one condition to another. I sought to create a space in which the actor could become an observer.  I wanted the passenger to be able to understand his relationship to the Central and Jubilee platforms upon immediate entrance into the station. In order to accomplish these goals, the interior of my design needed to combine easily understood space  with clear and direct passenger routing.

I decided to create a cylinder measuring seventy-five feet in diameter and extrude it ninety feet into the ground (this being the rough distance between street level and the Jubilee line platform). I skewed the cylinder to reflect the way Oxford Street slices through the street grid as well as to increase the perception of spatial depth. Cutting through this cylinder are the platform spaces and their means of connection. Passengers arriving from street level follow a sloping promenade to the ticket hall. After purchasing a ticket, they continue their journey until they reach the platform levels. Escalators slice through this space and are used primarily as a quick means of egress.

Opening the system of circulation allows for the passenger to understand his relationship within the architectural space of the station. The broad ramps allow for a slight meander in the act of willfull descension into the bowels of the station. Passengers are no longer forced to march ahead to their destinations. The open architecture of this system allows for pause and reflection.

(excerpt from thesis text)

This thesis seeks to further our understanding of underground space using this comparative language of nexus and network. A clear distinction exists between these terms; we see the same condition when comparing stations with systems, points with lines, static inaction with dynamic action, and orientation with disorientation. In order to place this dichotomy within the urban system, we must scribe a new language of terms and definitions. Our understanding of nexus and network will be broadened within the context of three categories: map, sign, and link. This paper will study these definitions and relationships within the primary case study of the London Underground, the world’s first subway system.

MAP— Starting at a macro scale, the map places the network into a formal and diagrammatic urban context. The map seeks to orient the passenger by creating a logical and easy method of representation. The map shows the system as a whole, an entire infrastructure built around a series of networks and a variety of nodes which either act as interchanges between other sub-surface lines or connections to a variety of surface transportation conditions.

In order to first have a map, we must have a network, and to have a network we must have construction of lines and stations. Underground architecture is unique because space is determined by subtraction, not addition. The first underground in the world was the Metropolitan Railway, built in London in 1863. The construction method was known as cut and cover, a massive disruption to the urban fabric in which entire blocks were cut wide open at depths of around seven meters. Once the infrastructure was in place, street-level conditions would be rebuilt. The spaces of these early lines were closely tied to the above-ground conditions. This had a lot to do with the low-level of depth, but also because the steam-operated rolling stock needed large swaths of open air in which to operate.

It was not until the advent of electricity that the underground architecture we best associate with subways came to fruition. At the turn of the twentieth century, tunneling resulted in deep-level Tube lines. The spaces of these lines and stations were different from their predecessors, cut off completely from the conditions on the surface. This distinction is represented through nomenclature. Some in London still associate the original cut-and-cover lines with the “underground” and the deep-level tunnel lines with the “tube.” For the majority, however, these terms go hand-in-hand. The system as a whole is officially known as the “underground” and lovingly nicknamed “the tube.”

Regardless of the depth of the station or line, however, underground architectural space results in significant disorientation to surface reference. Below ground, all familiar urban landmarks, roads, signage, etc. disappear. New methods of orientation take their place. The determinant of this new language is based on the dichotomy of nexus and network. The map is a means of which to resolve this problem through the formation of an iconic diagrammatic methodology.

By the 1920s, the growth of the London Underground network was already hampering the readability of the system. By placing the stations onto a map drawn to street-scale, the legibility, especially in the center of the city where the lines came together, became impossible. In 1933, there appeared in London a new kind of transit map, a diagrammatic representation of the seven existing railway lines. The designer of this new map was Henry Beck, an unemployed engineering draughtsman. His design compressed the outlying parts of the routes while enlarging the central portion where most of the interchanges were. This 1933 uses a graphic mode that delineates nexus and network via blob and grid.

Today’s Underground map shows the diagram in full effect, and indicates the vast growth of the system since the 1930s. This has become the map for London, an icon for a city whose surface conditions are constantly in flux. Clearer in this map is the intense radial nature of London’s Underground. In the 1930s, these radial lines were extended into the suburbs regardless of whether there were built-up communities. The understanding was that growth would follow the system. The diagram today stands as a testament to the massive building projects undertaken in London in the last century and a half. The earliest lines were single, private initiatives, and eventually the fabric merged into the autonomous system the city enjoys today.

So influential is the diagram that the understanding of urban relationships, of urban space, has changed. The diagram represents new pathways between areas previously unconnected. In London, the conception of urban space has evolved out of the diagram. The city is broken into concentric zones, based on distances from the city center. The farther one travels from the center, the higher the zone number and ticket price. Stations once in linear juxtaposition are now separated by concentric rings, a purely diagrammatic type of urban space, not dependent on surface or sub-surface relationships. In the future, these zones are bound to shift and respond with the city’s dynamic.

The map is a method of orientation. The order of the diagram stands in stark contrast to the surface condition. The map unifies the city. Through interchange, each and every node in the city is connected by network to another node miles and minutes away by surface transportation. In this sense, the map breaks surface boundaries. The map is also a representation of the fact that a vast arterial condition exists below the surface, an enormous networked public space.

At the same time, however, the map can disorient. Once underground, space perception is determined by the diagram, and in this sense, the map lies. Time and space are now determined diagrammatically, not geographically or temporally. This is aided by the fact that the method of transportation is essentially one that is static: the architecture of the subway car does not change as it moves through the system. Therefore, all reference points disappear, and the only thing left is the diagram.

SIGN— With the infrastructure of the system thought out, it is now appropriate to change scale and focus on the sign, how the network advertises itself through surface and sub-surface nexus. What methodologies are used to attract potential customers off the street and whisk them into this underground condition?

Stations act as points of orientation within the city, a familiar icon set within the chaos of the surface fabric. At any point, a passenger can see an Underground station and know that the entire city is easily accessible. From the earliest deepest-level tube lines, a system of architectural and graphic standards was used to advertise the existence of the underground network. In the first decade of the twentieth century, for instance, architect Leslie Green used an iconic language of oxblood stonework and archways to create a legible façade at street level that stood in contrast to its surroundings. As the system progressed out of the suburbs in the 1920s and 30s, significant design risks were taken by Charles Holden, who utilized methods of representation previously unseen in England’s transportation architecture.

Station architecture aside, the most familiar graphic advertisement for the underground is its iconic roundel, which can be seen as a diagrammatic combination of nexus and network. The roundel enjoys a significant presence within the surface fabric of the city. It is an icon, indicating points at which the underground network reaches the surface to take in and disperse passengers. The roundel also advertises the presence of the station below ground, the point at which the disorientation of the journey ends. It is at the station, the nexus, where the passenger is reoriented back into the diagram, and hence back into the urban space. The roundel brings a familiar graphic form deep beneath London, an icon linking the city above and beneath the surface.

LINK— The final method of analyzing network and nexus is via link. Link implies a connection, which inherently leads to an analysis of the station via section. It is through linkage that passengers reach one condition from another. Through analyzing the nexus in section we find that it can be viewed as a junction, a connection, and an interchange. In all cases, a station is linking the surface and subsurface, order and chaos, etc.

Junction, connection, and interchange imply movement, of the necessity of reaching point B from point A. Each term, however, carries different connotations within an underground network. Junction implies the linkage from sub-surface rail to surface rail condition. Connection implies the linkage from sub-surface rail to any other kind of surface or sub-surface transportation method, and interchange implies a linkage between sub-rail and sub-rail.

Passengers’ movement can be determined through uniform and prominent graphic signage. More importantly, however, is the layout and design of the station itself. In many of the stations of the Jubilee Line Extension project in the 1990s, there is a propensity towards representing passenger movement and flow like fluid within pipes.

Canary Wharf Station on the Jubilee Line Extension is an excellent contemporary case study for linkage. The station opens up to the surface alongside Canary Wharf Tower, one of many office towers built or being constructed at an abandoned shipping wharf. The design of the station shows the importance of section, of flow from one condition to another. Beneath ground, vaulted ceilings, dozens of ticket collectors, and escalators orient the passenger to the nearest and quickest exit. This interior is an excellent example of how light, space, and connection work together to form a simple link from platform to surface. The glass domes are immense points of reference for exit. There is no need for signage; movement is determined from architecture.

The animation begins with stop-motion photography showing a number of sketch concepts for a building perched on a mountainside. These designs take shape in axonometric, perspective, elevation, and plan and eventually fade into 3d space as the camera rotates and swings down. Floorplates, columns, and windows slice into view as the grid shifts from a theoretical space for sketch design to an infinite plane that the model now sits on. After the model is built the grid shifts and distorts into a topographical hillside, completing the switch from sketch 3d to computer 3d.

This description of process belies the nature of architectural media. On paper nothing is built; ultimately, a concept exists in the many theoretical spatial environments that architects use every day to convey an idea. Until space is actually occupied architecture exists as a projection of possibility.

The internet is an infinite, transient space, constantly expanding and evolving each day. It is an intangible universe of disparate ideas and hierarchies, of varying shades of nuance and topic, of systems open and closed. Over the last ten years we have seen countless innovative, creative uses of the internet as a foundation to produce structures for communication and networking. These seismic shifts in program have created an undulating system in which we are given access to an extraordinary amount of information.

As users, the vast majority of us access the internet using a browser with the capability to parse and organize a variety of coding languages. This data shows up within the pixelated frame of our computer screens. We scroll and surf at our own pace, clicking on what interests us and bouncing around a variety of pages; our path is never predetermined. It is highly likely that a news article will take us to source information, or that a music video will make us want to watch something else by the artist.  To further this idea of ephemerality, each webpage is constantly in flux, many being updated multiple times per day.

My project sought to structure these concepts by means of a digital skin that would average the RGB color values between two internet screens. The idea is that as two users surf and scroll, the combination of their actions is projected to pedestrians who are passing by and through the module. This digital skin, therefore, is constantly in flux, transmitting the variety of speeds, functions, and paths within the internet. For example, someone typing an email on a relatively static screen would be layered with someone quickly jumping through a photo album. This combination of program would create a shifting, ephemeral portrait, a piece of performance art between two individuals, at times beautiful and synchronous, at others jarring and discordant.

The studio then turned its attention to the design and realization of a full-scale prototype chair that would break the traditional separation of structure and skin. The design is an attempt to maintain the juxtaposition of modularity and negative space and explore how reaction generates form. Theoretically, the hexagons move and shift depending on where one sits on the chair, generating new patterns in the cells and shifts in the relationship between positive and negative.

The structure of the chair is composed of three axes of eighth-inch steel rods. Each rod was bent over a full-scale plot, and connected to its neighbors using brazing rods. The weaving of the steel rods gives rigidity to the curving form; the inclusion of a third axis not only counters bending but allows a modular system of triangles and hexagons to drive the structural aesthetic.

The lack of a mechanical bond between the springs and steel frame renders this project functionless as a chair. However, it was possible to sit, stand, and lie on the frame before the springs and plexiglass were introduced.

Once the project lost its function it became a sculpture, an unintentional study of light. The reflective, refractive, and transparent properties of the plexiglass modules produced a skin fully adaptable to the rhythm of its surroundings. There is no telling which modules will reflect the artificial light from fixtures or natural light from windows. When walking by the chair, the viewer is able to see the reflections bouncing along different modules, an improvised animation.

This project was featured as an example in Jesse Reiser’s essay “Ornament and its Other”, published 306090 Issue 10: Decoration, September 2006. The project was also a 2006 finalist for Princeton University’s annual Art of Science Competition.

For the final project, students were given a section of gallery space and presented the challenge of building an installation with wireframe models that linked to and expanded upon the rigor of the two-dimensional axonometric analysis.

The flip was the driving methodology in the axonometrics and I strove to expand upon its logic in the installation.  I separated the two axonometrics and placed them 8 vertical feet from each other on the wall.  Between these bookends I installed four wireframe models centered on a cylindrical core.  The first model represented the headphones case in its physical form; the last model described its flat axonometric dimensionality in flipped form.  The middle models were the results of these two transformations: from physical to graphic and from original to flipped.

To return to the original concept of spatial analysis via projection I used three overhead gallery lights to produce new drawings and relationships on the gallery wall.  Under these bright bulbs each wireframe model projectwed a trio of overlapping and rotating shadow drawings.  To further aid in the immediate understanding of this concept, I connected the four corners of the headphones case (regardless of its physical or projected form) with thin black thread.

This shadow installation is the result of an investigative study of the connections that can exist between the physical and the representative.